Cops Clocking Dollars With High-tech Laser

LAKE MARY — Sgt. Ronnie Gregory had his gun drawn and was firing at will. He barked into a small radio unit on his shoulder as he squeezed the trigger.

''We got target No. 7 coming up! Black Ford Explorer! Coming up now!

That's the one! At 69 . . . 69!''

Gregory had an open line of fire from his catbird seat on the Lake Mary Boulevard overpass where he looked down at his targets - motorists doing 68 mph or better in the Interstate 4 construction zone, where the limit is 55. You had to pity the fools.

Gregory was packing state-of-the-art heat in the war against speeders: the Pro Laser I Infrared Lidar System. It shoots tight laser beams instead of broad radio waves like the radar units in cop cars.

The Pro Laser gauges not just the speed of a passing vehicle but the exact distance between the gun and the vehicle when the shooter pulls the trigger. Courts like that.

Gregory was the trigger man Wednesday in a dragnet that gunned down 80 motorists who learned that speed kills . . . your wallet. Fines - double in construction zones - ranged from $220 to $320 for two drivers clocked at 84. (One more mph and the price would have been $520.)

''I wish they would use the money to pay the troopers,'' said Gregory, referring to the woefully underpaid Florida Highway Patrol. (Starting salary around $22,000 for a life-and-death job.)

It was the rear-ending of an FHP trooper's car in the construction zone last week that prompted city, county and state law enforcement agencies to combine forces for the big crackdown.

Gregory and his Laser Pro were staked out at the same spot two weeks ago, but he had only five Lake Mary cops to chase the speeders. Wednesday he had two dozen officers at his disposal.

This was a sore point with one Lake Mary resident who stopped to watch the operation. Four people have died in work-zone accidents since the project started a year ago, he said, but it took the FHP mishap to mobilize the troops.

''Instead of having 25 to 30 cars here today they should have two or three cars out here every day,'' he said.

The same civilian said Lake Mary police should have set this kind of laser-beam trap for speeders long ago.

''We didn't have the technology,'' Gregory said. ''NASA had it for eons before we got it. NASA has all the technology.''